NEW! ACU Approved toe guards for swingarms. These are required to pass ACU scrutineering when racing and protect hands and feet from being mangled through the rear wheel sprocket! Easily fitted to most swingarms with variable mounting points from 30-65mm between centres.

NOTE: We can diagnose, repair, supply and exchange Marelli 5.9M ECUs! See our ECU Repair page for more info!

ECU Notes

The P7 has identical fuel/ignition maps for front and rear cylinders, and in fact it only has one map which is applied to both front and rear. So, P7s have no rear cylinder offset map.

The P8, with its larger memory has two maps, one for the for the front cylinder and one for the rear. The basic reason that the P8 has better performance is that the two cylinders can be fueled independently and differently to compensate for combustion chamber temperature differences caused by a reduced airflow pattern across the vertical cylinder. Ducati did not take advantage this facility on the 888, and made the front map the same as the rear.

Both the P7 and P8, with the appropriate chip, can run dual injectors as in the SPs. In these cases the second injector joins in at higher revs and throttle openings to get the required amount of fuel into the engine.

The P7 and P8 have a mechanical CO adjustment like the later 1.6M. More recent 1.5M and 5.9M ECUs need to have their diagnostic port connected to a Mathesis in order to adjust the CO.

The 851, 907 and early 888's up to serial number 000508 (including SP5, LTD and Corsa,) and ‘93 Supermono used the Weber-Marelli IAW P7 ECU. Later 888's from serial number 000509, 916 Strada, 916SP, 916SPS, 996SPS 955 SPA, 916 Racing, and some 996RS use the Weber-Marelli IAW P8 ECU.

The P8 also came in earlier Moto Guzzi Daytona and California and Laverda 668 (I think.) If you need a replacement, they're all the same.

The problem with the Weber-Marelli engine management system is that the system was never designed for use by those outside the factory, so the knowledge of the structure and content of the data files is limited to those with the time and expertise to crack the code.

Another limitation for the tuner is the fact that the fuel and ignition data is held on an Erasable, Programmable, Read-Only Memory (EPROM) chip. As the name implies, this is a read-only memory store which cannot be written to while in service. This means new data must be programmed or 'burned' into a new ROM in a separate ROM programmer and the new chip then installed in the Weber.

The tuning option for most people has been to seek out reprogrammed ROM chips from aftermarket suppliers who have spent time cracking the factory software. A variety of modified chips is available. The FIM chip is highly regarded.

How the FIM System Works

A question arose recently where a 996 owner had installed a custom FIM chip that matched his aftermarket exhaust system. The owner had then tweaked the setup further and saved the new settings using the FIM software from his laptop.

Now, I assumed that the chip that FIM uses is an EEPROM (electronically erasable programmable read only memory) that can be altered electronically - unlike a factory-issue EPROM (electronically programmable read only memory) that needs to wiped by exposure to ultra violet light in order to be reprogrammed. I thought this is what makes FIM chips unique - their ability to be programmed repeatedly. Both chip types retain their program/data forever without power.

Anyway, the owner asked whether the additional tweaks that he made were transferred to another 1.6M computer if he took the FIM chip out and reinstalled it in the second ECU.

I always assumed that the settings were written to the FIM chip and would be transfered with the chip swap.

Not so ...

Here’s Duane Mitchell’s (Ultimap/FIM) explanation:

“The FIM EPROM are the same as a factory EPROM in that it cannot be reprogrammed while they are in the ECU. They are EPROM, not EEPROM.

Our zone system works as follows:

The ECU contains an EEPROM which can be written-to while the engine is running. This is used to store 'original' software variables such as stored fault codes, but little else. We use the spare EEPROM in the ECU to store our 8 zones (one overall trim and 7 specific zones), as well as our maximum RPM telltale and a few other things accessible with our hand terminals and PC software.

When an Ultimap chip is fitted to a 'virgin' ECU (one that has never used our stuff before) it checks the zone area and if it's found blank it puts zero trims in all locations. Then when you trim the ECU using the HHT the locations are modified and work as a fuel trim 'overlay' on the contents of the map stored in the EPROM. This overlay is non-volatile and held in the ECU.

So, if you remove the Ultimap chip and place a stock chip in the ECU, these locations are ignored and the ECU runs dead stock. Or, if you place the Ultimap chip in another ECU, it will look for these locations and use the overlay in that ECU to modify the chip maps.

So, the zone trims are stored not in the chip, but in the ECU, and they will work on ANY Ultimap chip used in that ECU, and DO NOT affect the chip's operation in another ECU.”

The interesting corollary to all this is that once you’ve programmed a FIM chip in it’s ECU, if you put a different FIM chip into that same ECU, the overlays for the first chip will be applied to the second chip - unless you clear the overlays first.

According to Duane:

“The only way to clear the zones is with our HHT (no longer manufactured) or PC diagnostic program used by BCM, etc. Neither the Mathesis or MDST-type programs do this since they do not use our communications protocols.”

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